Abstract
Occupational segregation by sex is a persistent feature of labor markets all around the world. I provide a new perspective on why men and women continue to enter different occupations by investigating the intergenerational transmission of the sex composition of occupations using Swedish register data. I find that the more sex-stereotypical the occupations of parents are, the more sex-stereotypical the occupations of their children will be. The intergenerational associations are stronger between children and their same-sex parent than between children and their opposite-sex parent, and stronger for sons than for daughters. I also show that the intergenerational associations between children and their same-sex parent are only partially accounted for by children entering the same occupation or group of occupations as their same-sex parent.